Sunday morning in Paris
Sunday morning in Paris is supposed to be the time to have a croissant and café au lait at a small café and talk about world events or what you had for
dinner last night. Alas the ban on smoking has increased the appeal of this to runners at the same time that it has driven the Parisians away. But Sunday morning is also a great time for running in Paris. Most businesses are closed, restaurants have yet to open if they will at all, students are sleeping, few people go to church, and traffic is relatively light. Especially if you choose to run on the highway along the Seine. It is closed to auto traffic and open to bikers and daring runners.
I hopped out of bed about 9 AM (hey that’s pretty good given the time difference) and dressed in some running tights and a long-sleeve running shirt and stepped through the passageway and exited the building. The temperature was in the upper forties and a slight drizzle was falling. I felt immediately conspicuous given my clothing. Paris is full of skinny attractive people but the proportion that work out is not that great and those that walk around in athletic attire is even less. Today, I saw no one but me.
This was my first run on this highway and none of my French acquaintances had ever heard of this and even thought it to be a strange concept. However, the internet had told me about this run and I needed a good run to ease the bloated feeling of eating so much – quantity and frequency.
I knew how to get to the highway. It runs just beside the river and so from my apartment, I headed to Notre Dame on Sunday morning in my Shakespeare tights. The trick is finding access to the highway since
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there are entrances only every mile or so. After getting a few stares and taking the photo of some tourists, I found an entrance and broke into a run. I started a little fast as I ran down the ramp but I knew it would take time to find a rhythm after so much walking on concrete.
Running for me is often about zoning out and sometimes I barely remember covering portions of my regular loop. For this reason, and security – from crazy drivers – my running while travelling is different. While many people think that you need to see everything, I much prefer the comfort of the run feeling good. I trust my running instincts to watch for cars, traffic lights, uneven pavement or ground, dogs and other potential problems. When I look around, I am conscious of what is going on. I think about it actively and I also think about the physical parts of the run. Breathing, stride length, minor changes in elevation – things that make the run mentally harder. This is not desirable, but in a strange city, there is no choice.
The upside of the conscious run is that there are lots of intentionally and unintentionally funny things out there. It is a great way to learn about a large portion of the city quickly and later amaze locals and fellow travelers alike with your knowledge of the streets and certain out-of-the way places. Why yes, I have seen the new museum, or that statue or the crepe stand at the park or the weird outdoor art in the park. In my mind, a run is the only way to discover and visit Les Tuileries, the spectacular gardens in Paris in between the Louvre museum and the Champs Elysees. They are just too big to visit other than to get exercise if you are a tourist already spending 4 or 5 hours per day walking. It
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provides a great track with little traffic for the runner.
Today, though, I am trying to figure out what my course is. It seems that the major section of the closed highway headed away from the center of town. I of course want to go towards the center of everything. I have estimated that a 9-mile run will take me to the base of the Eiffel Tower. Since I have run only once this week, I decide that the run is not so long as to wear me out or to make me sore. Years ago, we had gone out separately from Travis for a few hours. After awakening, he saw the Eiffel Tower and decided to walk there before meeting us for lunch at 1PM. The short story is that it looked close to him from several miles away. He walked a while and it looked really close. He walked some more & it looked close. Eventually, he ran out of time and had to walk back in a hurry. But I used Google Maps to approximate the distance and I had a breakfast companion that was very flexible on the hour of the first meal of the day.
I run about a mile on an empty highway. There are a few bikers and a few other runners out. Since one would assume that half of the people are moving my direction, I really don’t pass by many people. However I pass enough that I begin to consider what the proper etiquette is. It is easy enough to get by on a crowded city sidewalk with limited French. Most people don’t acknowledge you. They go to lengths to not interact and to be polite in that strange metropolitan way with only the occasional pardon heard. What do runners do or say? In Central Park, you can consider yourself acknowledged if no one runs into you. On the bike trails of Santa Monica, it is okay to admire hard bodies, but there are too many people to say hello to everyone. On the bike trail on Lakeshore in Chicago, quite a
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few midwesterners exchange greetings. In your own neighborhood, you say hello and wave a lot because you never know who knows whom. In general, I give a lot of quick nods, peace signs (yes that is my standard and automatic wave and predates any recent political association), and “mornings”, “hey, what’s up?”, etc.
So options in Paris include bonjour, a wave, a nod and ignoring the other person. I try to emulate the other person but it is generally too late to respond once the pass has occurred. It seems that I will be awkward regardless of what I do, so I opt to do what I feel most comfortable with: a slight wag of the finger with a slight nod. I don’t know these people and I want to be a good ambassador, so I seek to minimize the issue and convince myself that I acted appropriately – for a runner. Not a Frenchman or American, but a runner.
The empty highway has disappeared and I am navigating a cobblestone path along the river’s edge while activity on the street picks up. I see entrances to garages, restaurants, shopping arcades that evade the casual tourist. There is the odd jazz musician seeking Euros and taking advantage of the acoustics of the bridges. I see an empty highway now on the other side of the river that has no obvious connection other than one of the busy bridges. I smell urine from the homeless that lets me know that if I really can’t hold it, there is an outlet. I pass by the boats loading for Sunday brunch cruises on the Seine. Families, couples, senior citizens and tourists are boarding. Each has their own reason and the array of clothing shows that. Once again I am aware of my attire as I pass through at the dock.
The rough path ends and I scramble up the
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steps to the sidewalks that follow the river. Athletes have given way to dog walkers and I begin to watch my step as I remember the Parisian fondness for dogs. I have a rough idea of where I am and consider a detour – it is after all a French word – to pass by the Arc de Triomphe. It is of course instantly recognizable as a bad idea. I only vaguely know the way there, to a spot certain to be overrun with traffic and tourists and which seldom would be listed as a running destination. But an event illustrating exactly the opposite is the magnet pulling me there.
I was much younger then and early into calling myself a runner. We had arrived in Paris in the midst of the World Cup games that France was hosting with a lack of respect on our part for the excitement that the home field advantage would cause. Spoiler – France won the finals. We watched the finals in a crowded French restaurant in the Latin Quarter on what at that time passed for a big-screen TV. The owner opened free bottles of champagne, people danced on the tables, and later the celebrations started. Groups of people had wandered the streets for days chanting “We’re going to the finals” and “Go Blue!” and it continued afterwards. Our hotel was on Boulevard St Michel which became one of the central points (at least in my head) for what was basically driving around a big block and honking your horn more than any other car. The game finished late and the party went on into the Oui hours of the night. And of course that was our last night and we had a noon flight the following morning.
So what does this have to do with my run on the highway? I like to run before a long flight. It makes me feel a little less slothful. I will sacrifice sleep in the fruitless belief that I will sleep better on the flight. I
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arose early that day in order to confuse the Princess of Jetlag, and made it onto the street. I wasn’t super confident in my ability to not get lost so I decided to run on the sidewalks on the Right Bank. I had run a few miles when I realized that I was near (less than a mile) from the Arc de Triomphe and that the streets were completely empty. A couple of zigzags later and I stood alone under the Arc with an empty Champs Elycee in front of me. Travis had quoted and paraphrased Napoleon here many times: L'Etat, c'est moi! Here so many victories had been celebrated and champions recognized. The Tour de France passes by here every year. I felt that enthusiasm and I used some version of a French expression to claim a mythical championship - perhaps running, perhaps general – and to raise my arms as I looked down Champs Elycee where there were no challengers.
Like Forest Gump, I started to run and I kept raising my arms and running. As I approached Place de la Concorde, I saw that workers were already busily assembling a stage for the coronation of the new heroes. None of them realized at the time that I was the champion, as the Queen background music likely played only on the personal IPod in my head.
And that is what almost caused me to turn away from the task at hand. But today I was a man on a mission. It was the Eiffel Tower or bust. And so I followed the sidewalk as it curved left to follow the river while the Arc de Triomphe awaited a different champion. The path was straightforward at this point and the distance between bridges provided for some uninterrupted running.
My pace picked up as my mind drifted. The
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cool weather provided perfect running conditions for me, but was mild enough that the rest of the world had decided to join me outside. I found a relatively empty stretch on my side of the river as I came up towards the Eiffel Tower. I felt like a runner here. Others, at least in my mind at that moment, saw me as a runner: a true athlete in the midst of the city. I wasn’t tired but rather warmed up and full of energy. I surveyed the scene to decide when and how to turn around. Should I cross the river and risk traffic? How? Where?
The how and where really had few answers as there were only two bridges. Rather than cross right at the tower at Trocadero, I ran down to the next bridge. This would let me run by the entire area and the full block. After crossing the bridge with a surprising number of pedestrians, I chose to stay close to the river rather than go under the Tower. There were people eating hot dogs, the carousel had young children riding, police were already trying to aid the compromised traffic patterns. I stopped for a moment to cross the street at the command of one traffic cop and turned to take in the scene. I saw smiles and flashes and heard multilingual directions. I thought that I should make myself a part of this strange painting. It would be a small section that most would overlook, but that some professor could review and later explain the relevance of this strangely-dressed Shakespearean among the crowd. A couple asked me to take their photo. Then I offered to do so for another, then a family, then another and just as I could have settled into a new profession as a tourist photographer extraordinaire, the crosswalk signal changed, the shrill whistle of the traffic awakened me, a balloon floated over the river and I was off running again. On this side of the river, my pace
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quickened and slowed as I chose my route on sidewalks and around people. I ran by a museum that was just opening; both for the morning and as in only recently in existence. It was the Quai Branly museum and it displays collections of objects from African, Asian, Oceanian and American civilizations. I committed the name to memory and later our Parisian friend wondered how I knew such much more about Paris than her. How wrong she was.
Like many runs of this type, distance seemed to be a poor yardstick (sorry, metric system). Time was passing and the uncrowded window of opportunity for running was shutting. I ran a mile on a closed highway on this side of the river before it ended and I could find no sign of a continuation other than sidewalks for the remainder of the run. But it was a run. I had a wet shirt, partially from the rain, but mainly from the sweat of a workout. My hair no longer looked like a cross between European styling and like I had slept on it. I recognized the landmarks indicating that I would soon be back at the start.
I stopped at the Boulevard St Michel where the coffee shops with a view of Notre Dame had begun to fill the tables despite the 4 Euro price for a mediocre coffee. I turned towards the crowds already filling the corner at St. Germain. I still remembered that I was dressed strangely. The rain had increased and I didn’t have an umbrella to maintain my current level of wetness. But it felt good, because after the run I felt like a runner and I assumed that others saw me as such: an athlete in their midst. Of course mainly they were seeking to avoid bumping into this man who obviously needed a shower. And then breakfast with Eva.
